Healing Your Heart: When Relationships Suffer After Loss

- This is not written from a prescriptive pedestal, but from personal, recent experience 

Make no mistake grief is a package deal.  Along with the obvious: the loss of your loved one – you will face a host of other unanticipated and sometimes, soul and life-changing challenges that further cripple you.  As if the loss event is not enough! 

One of the most challenging of these can be the changes in relationships with family and friends. Almost no-one is exempt. 

If your relationships are untouched, you are indeed very fortunate and in the minority. But for most of us there will be an undeniable shift in relationships either to a greater or lesser degree, which can severely impact on your ability to heal.

In some instances it will happen almost immediately following the loss; when emotions are at their most sensitive and raw and feelings are expressed unfiltered and unchecked.  This is most common within the inner circle of families and extended family where everyone is staggering from shock. 

Because we are all unique in our personalities and our relationships, and certainly the depth of our relationships with the one/s we lost, we will all experience and express our emotions differently.  Every situation is different.  Every loss is different.  But each situation carries with it the potential for conflict; misunderstanding, misdirected anger, frustration, and things said which we later regret.  The consequences can be devastating, severely damaging and even permanently altering or ending a relationship. Sudden, traumatic loss can further intensify this situation.

Then there are the family members further removed from the loss, friends and acquaintance relationships.  The close friends in your life who have your back; the ones you hang out with and socialize with; friendships you shared as a couple (if you lost a partner); work colleagues and the like. These are the people not directly affected by your loss (unless they were also friends with the one you lost).  These are the ones most likely to be there to offer comfort and support.  They are “stronger” than those also affected by the loss, because they are not personally dealing with the pain.   You need them to just “be there” for you and acknowledge your pain.  To be a soft place to fall, because that’s what friends are for, right?  If it works out that way – great! But even here it can go horribly wrong. 

Because this category of family and friends care and don’t want to see us in pain they feel compelled to try to fix what is wrong. Their love and concern for us drives them to “do” something – to fix it with words.  Make it better.  The timing can be completely off. We are so very far from reason and fixes.  All we need is a shoulder and a willing ear, someone to sit with us rather than a willing tongue that speaks into our grief situation saying things we are not ready to hear. They are left bewildered when their heartfelt attempts are met with resistance from us. 

The more they try to fix us, the more resistance they get. And the griever is left feeling worse – their desperate emotional need unmet.

We cannot lean on those grieving the loss too, because they are struggling themselves and those relationships may be challenged at this time.  This is when we need the people we rely on the most and sadly, often these very relationships are the ones which suffer the most.

Grief is complicated. Living on is hard.  Surrounded by people we can still feel alone in our unique pain. We feel misunderstood and judged. The cumulative pain is terrible and impossible to explain to someone who has not gone through it themselves. 

If you are lucky, with time, as the intensity of emotions surrounding the loss begin to almost imperceptibly subside and you begin to think outside of your own pain, some of those damaged relationships can be mended.  Often great pain has been inflicted, either on one side, but most likely felt on both sides.  We feel we do not have the strength to expose our hearts again.  We still reel from pain of loss and couldn’t possibly handle more. 

There is only one, yes one, solution to this: FORGIVENESS.  The sooner we decide to forgive, the sooner we begin to close up those wounds and are able to focus on grieving better and healing.  The only one who has the power to do that is YOU.  It does not mean you have to face the person/s immediately. Some situations may not allow for this. Forgiveness starts with you, in your heart.  You set yourself free from that extra burden of pain which someone in grief should not have to bear.  You are already carrying too much. 

Research has shown that holding a grudge can cause physical pain. Forgiveness has health benefits:

• Greater spiritual and psychological well-being
• Less anxiety and stress
• Lowers blood pressure
• Lowers pain
• Fewer symptoms of depression
• Stronger immune system
• Improved heart health

Forgiveness is not easy and we justify our anger if we have been deeply hurt.  But will holding onto your anger change anything? No, but letting go of it will.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance a violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” – Mark Twain

By forgiving you give the other person an opportunity to redeem themselves and also be released from the bonds that hurt causes to both parties.  It may not always be reciprocated and it is not a free pass for them to use to walk all over you again.  That does not mean you should hold onto your anger.  When one forgives – two souls are set free. 

Forgiveness is not easy when you are still hurting, but forgiveness is not a feeling – it is an action.  Feelings, emotions are unpredictable.  Forgiveness is not always deserved, but we all deserve the peace forgiveness brings. It does not excuse the behaviour, but it prevents the behaviour from destroying our hearts. Nothing will consume your heart and soul more assuredly like unforgiveness. There is such a great hidden grief in unforgiveness and who needs more grief? Forgiveness is a step towards true healing.  Here is the clincher: forgiveness has the greatest benefit to the forgiver!  Forgiveness does not need to be deserved to be given.  When it comes to forgiveness it is definitely more blessed to give than to receive.

Finally for the believer in God, forgiveness of deep seated pain, the “impossible” hurt to forgive, becomes possible in the promise from God in Romans 5:5 "The Love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us".

If our lives are committed to God and the Holy Spirit resides in us - HIS love is given to us and because His love in us is stronger than our hatred and bitterness, we are able to forgive the biggest hurts.  When we forgive, we are forgiven. 

“When you initially forgive, it is like letting go of a hot iron. There is initial pain and the scars will show, but you can start living again.” ― Stephen Richards